Whew! what a scorcher this week is, gardening was a challenge to say the least, keeping water up to the whole garden and myself was what took up most of my time, I felt hand watering was best because of evaporation.
Some seeds are popping before I get to collecting them, however with two little Grand Daughters helping I now have small paper bags holding seed from delphiniums, dianthus, poppies, foxglove, hollyhock, sweet peas, lupins plus many more to come. I planted a few trays of seeds last Friday and seedlings were up by Monday, with fast germination and growth seed trays are best kept outside in shaded light and mist watered only when the top layer of mix is dry, over watering will encourage collapse as roots are too few to take in excess moisture.
Have a look around plants that have dropped seed from spring flowering plants in your garden, I have found nice little seedlings of pansies, viola, marigolds, hellebore's, sweet William and aquilegias, which I have now potted to get strong root growth before planting out.
Take seed heads off anything you do not want to spread, that goes for weeds as well, make sure you whack the seed heads off and dispose of even if you don't have the time to deal with removing whole plants at the time.
Keep trimming hedges as they put on soft new growth and either compost the trimmings or scatter them around the garden, they are soft enough to break down at this time of the year.
Rhododendons, camellias and azaleas would benefit from a good soaking then a layer of mulch.
Roses would also find mulching helpful to retain moisture during these hot months, plus a dressing of manure or blood and bone now would give a boost after the first long flowering. There is a good supply of well cooked, weed free mulch at the Resource Recovery park, a very reasonably priced option to be bagged or scooped onto a trailer.
Keep moisture up to compost heaps to get them cooking.
Lawns
its grass grub time again, I see evidence of them on some of my lawns! they are most active from February to May, for a couple of years there was no product to deal to them but now have seen some back on shelves. I did not see many of the brown night beetles around this year, let's hope the flood we had drowned most of them which will hopefully keep grass grub numbers down.
Vegetables: There is heaps of growing time ahead so keep sowing root veg seed and plants. carrots (harvest April / may) parsnips (harvest June)
board beans (harvest May / July) cabbage sow in seed tray, plant out in 4 weeks (harvest April May ) cauliflower sow in seed tray, plant out in 4 to 6 weeks (harvest May / July) leeks grow in seed tray plant out in 4 to 6 weeks (harvest May / June) lettuce I sow butter crunch now and stagger it right into winter
onions grow in seed trays, plant out in 4 to 6 weeks (harvest July - October)
silverbeet (harvest March / April
Cheers, Linda
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